Omnimaga
Omnimaga => Site Feedback and Questions => Topic started by: DJ Omnimaga on July 01, 2010, 01:35:14 am
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As you could notice in the past few months, there are several good programs on ticalc.org that were ignored and some feature requests ignored. In some cases, for example with Axe Parser, it took everything to get it featured. I even had to make a video showing it in action to convince them. No offense to ticalc.org staff, they did a great job, especially on file archiving and posted more news, but I noticed a decline on the later in the past months. I had to bug tev so he feature certain programs.
I remember in late 2005, there were fewer and fewer features afterward there. Eventually it seemed like the community activity dropped. People thought nothing good were released anymore. With the large amount of files released in a month, sometimes, it's good to give the best ones some recognition. Now it seems like features are heading in the bad direction again, and despite my efforts and I am sure a bunch of other people shared their concern too (both on IRC, ticalc news or forums), still not much have changed. Contra 83, Robot War 82 (which doesn't need to be tested to know it's a great game), FFTOM2, Orbit, that bubble game Thepengiun made and Geometry Wars...
This is why in the past month, I started wondering if Omnimaga should start its own "POTY" award? Following example on BrandonW's release of the OS 2.53 and 2.54 MP patches, fixing bugs TI would not fix, we would do what people on ticalc.org don't want to do (or rarely wants to do). We would focus only on games and dev tools, though, since this is what Omnimaga focuses on. I am not too sure about making news articles about programs yet, since this would require a considerable amount of work, but for sure, every month, we would add calculator games to a new featured program page that would be added on Omni. At the end of the year, we would run polls where people would vote on their favorite 83+ tool, 68k and Nspire. There would also be a computer poll and one for other calc models, if applicable.
My only concern against that is that some people may see this as competition against ticalc.org. However, our goal would simply be to feature games/tools we feel that should have been featured (or that was featured). We would host NO file here (except maybe the RPGs and tools, since we have those sections in our archives). On the featured page, we would link to the respective File info pages on ticalc.org. Authors would still get their downloads there.
I thought about the idea also because Omnimaga traffic increased a lot in the past year, so featured programs (or stuff we felt that should have been featured) would get even more recognition.
I would most likely find new names for the page and the award, though.
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I think it would be awesome to create a POTM award instead. I think ticalc does a good job over the long run, but not too well in the short term. Its the beginning of the month right about now anyway so its the perfect opportunity. Maybe 3 or 4 people/programs get nominated every month (completed ones) and then the voting starts on the first of the following month and the winner is announced soon after. It would be more exciting than a yearly award in my opinion becasue it is more frequent and current which I think is your main intention for suggesting this. This award could even prompt ticalc to feature more programs since a highlighted program would be available every month. A community vote would of course be used.
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Yeah, good idea, why we wait for the others to do it while we can do it ourselves? Of course, it would feature Omnimaga stuff only. And I really feel that this board needs some featured program section.
(w00t 100 posts!)
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My only concern about POTM is activity slumps. In 2000, some months they only had 5 programs featured and they had to merge 68k/z80/windows/etc together in one poll. It became messy and they stopped it.
We could maybe do a seasonal award, like Best Program of Winter 2010, for example. We would be certain that there wouldn't be too many program winning by default and the competition would be better. That said, the community has picked up a lot, lately. Maybe there will be more program releases in long term, so POTM would work. One other issue with POTM, though, is that it would require much more work. I would most likely need to assign someone for managing the polls and the award pages
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I think it's a good idea. Bring on the POTMs again! (maybe) ;D
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i think POTM isn't enough time to make a program that's notable. for example, what if there are many entries, 8-10, but none of the programs are of good quality? i think program of the season (lol, POTS?) would be better, because that gives time to perfect the program but frequent enough. Two month intervals, i think, would also work pretty well.
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I think it's OK to organize a POTM, but we need advertisement on other TI sites for it to work. Do we have some entering criterion? For example, more than n posts in the dev thread/subforum, more than n unique people posted in the development thread, featured on ticalc (that's the ticalc POTY requirement if I'm not mistaken), featured on omnimaga/uti/maxcoderz... (i.e. have a subforum of your own),... These are just possibilities, I'm not giving my opinion there.
Replicating the POTY is, IMHO, not a good idea.
1. Competing with ticalc doesn't really make sense. Most non-developer people end up there on a search (as did I, a few years ago), and it would not have the same 'weight' in download stats as it has when winning the ticalc POTY. (for the simple reason that we are not ticalc, the archive is not here) Ticalc.org has no POTM, so that's safe(r).
2.Certainly in the beginning, the omnimaga POTY would not be the same 'badge of honour' to the author. Ticalc.org's requirements for featuring, more specifically POTY entry, are very high. If we want to outperform ticalc, we'll need higher standards. I understand from DJ's post that that is the opposite of our goal.
One con to the POTM award: it will be a bitch to moderate. Maybe it's better to organize it bimestrially, or even every 3 months.
Just my two cents :)
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i don't think we're competing for ticalc... DJ's message specifically said downloads would be linked to ticalc. the whole z80 community is supposed to be about cooperation. the more people programming calculators, the more we can learn and progress.
that said, i agree that an omnimaga POTY/POTM would not give the same badge of honor. but it would probably get more traffic into omnimaga and ticalc. since people look for good games, if bored math students find out that every month or every couple months omnimaga posts a quality game, they'll come back, and maybe get interested themselves in programming, which is a benefit for all.
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Mmh, my argumentation totally missed its mark. I should proofread better next time :P
Actually, I just wanted to say that having two awards for basically the same thing does not make sense, and certainly not if one of them is well-established.
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you have a point there. that's why i think it should be more frequent. monthly, once every two months or seasonal. that way, rather than calling in the best of an entire year, it's the best of this short period of time. to me, a POTY means it must be an impressive program to beat out everything else developed in a year. if the time length is a month or two, i know it's a decent program, so i should at least try it out, but i can't expect too much of it. i'm thinking this would 1) give more traffic to Omnimaga and 2) more downloads at ticalc. a program of the year isn't practical since it would rival ticalc's too much, but a more often, less esteemed competition would just give a little boost to activity every few months. on the other side, making a competition too frequent could make the competition dull over time.
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That's exactly what I meant.
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I think if we do this, we'll feature programs that deserve attention but are overlooked by bigger programs that come out in the same year. For instance, what if calc84maniac releases F-Zero this year. Isn't it appropriate for both it and Axe Parser to win POTYs, but of course they both can't if they're released in the same year. This is a problem that I think needs to be solved. :)
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Then we could have a system with laureates: e.g. three programs win, but no further distinction is made.
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I think the POTM is a good idea, and it gives more continual excitement to the forums. If we did add a POTY, what would we be doing right now? Not much, the end of the year isnt for a bit. But with a POTM (or every 2 or 3 months) it would add continual excitement and interesting in Omnimaga and the participating programs.
One thing i just wanted to throw out as well, these are not all going to be Omnimaga programs correct? I dont think our community produced enough games for a contest every couple of months. Definetaly they should include all Omnimaga games, but i think we should also comb the archives and find those diamonds in the rough, those really good programs that just never got featured.
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Mmhh... It might be a good idea only to feature active projects or 'fresh' programs. Even if it's only for manageability. And en plus, active stuff draws more people.
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I think it should cover all programs released in a finished version in that span of time, no matter where. :)
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Mmh, my argumentation totally missed its mark. I should proofread better next time :P
Actually, I just wanted to say that having two awards for basically the same thing does not make sense, and certainly not if one of them is well-established.
My goal was to get some stuff that were not on ticalc.org news to be featured here. The bar would still be high, but at a reasonable level. We would not do like ticalc.org did in 2009 and feature crappy BASIC math programs. Games like Orbit, Geometry Wars and FFTOM2 would get featured. Don't you find ridiculous that xLIB was never featured? I mean, many BASIC games that got featured on ticalc used xLIB. My goal would simply to be more fair and not biased towards a language or another platform.
IMHO, Contra 83, Robot Wars, Geometry Wars and Orbit are games that deserves as much a feature/POTY place as games like Super Mario, Zelda, etc. It's a shame that they are not getting featured on ticalc. I asked them many times, to no avail. Either their standards are way too high, or they just don't care enough about the community.
However, maybe a seasonal award could be a better idea? Also, I think projects shouldn't be featured unless they have a demo or beta that is fully playable and have enough features in its current state. They wouldn't be allowed to be nominated twice, though, if finished.
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IMHO, Contra 83, Robot Wars, Geometry Wars and Orbit are games that deserves as much a feature/POTY place as games like Super Mario, Zelda, etc. It's a shame that they are not getting featured on ticalc. I asked them many times, to no avail. Either their standards are way too high, or they just don't care enough about the community.
However, maybe a seasonal award could be a better idea? Also, I think projects shouldn't be featured unless they have a demo or beta that is fully playable and have enough features in its current state. They wouldn't be allowed to be nominated twice, though, if finished.
Seasonal would be cool, I just think it would be tough to find new fresh stuff throughout the community to feature. I never understood why Contra never got featured. Bryan did a bang up job on it. Geometry Wars and Robot Wars are both extremely well done and are also worthy of features.
I say only finished projects or extremely well done beta versions. Something like wizards would be an example of those extremely well done betas.
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true, Axe parser is another example. We must not either go with the mentality of never featured unfinished programs either, because 99% of the projects in the community never gets finished and it would be a shame if a very solid beta of something was ignored just because it was a beta and that the author did not plan to finish it. Of course, if it looks like the final version will be done in only a few months (Doors CS 7 being an example), it may be better to wait until it's finished, though.
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I disagree with the claims that there would be too few programs to nominate. I think ticalc usually gets at least 6 programs nominated per year and that's not including all the notable programs that go under the radar as DJ mentioned. I think a bimonthly award would have a bare minimum of at least 3 decent nominees (I assume there is just one category and not splitting into separate platforms since that makes more sense for a duration this size) so I don't see any problem with that.
The only other thing I would like to add is that I think we should do the nominations differently than the way ticalc does it. Rather than nominate programs when they come out, I think it would be better to nominate them all at the same time about a week before the voting starts. It ensures that the number of nominees is not too low or too high since the bar can shift once the knowledge of how many programs released is known. It also adds a hint of surprise since most people won't know if their entries are going to be nominated or not until the end of the month.
Last thing I want to say is that we should not nominate programs that have been released prior to this award being founded, it wouldn't be fair becasue the time span is too great.
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Bi-monthly could maybe work. But yeah, remember there are activity slumps sometimes. In late 2008, things were nearly dead in the z80 community in terms of releases. Summers are at risk of seeing this happen again. Trust me, I've been around for 9 years and saw this happen twice (late 2001 and 2008) Be warned that on some periods, like July-august, we may risk of seeing nominated programs winning by default. Also merging all platforms together would not be a good idea, as this is what lead to Ticalc.org POTM's demise in Late 2000 (most people hated that POTM formula).
Personally, I think that if opinions diverges too much about what should be done, it might be best to not do it at all. Otherwise, we will end up with complains from one side or another everytime we post a news about the nominations.
Also I don,t think there should be a max amount of nominees in a period, else it would be unfair if one month 10 amazing programs were released and that we only nominated 5.
Remember that my goal there is to make sure programs gets the recognition they deserve. If we can't do this because it would be unfair to nominate the program, then we migth as well just not do the POTM thing.
Idk really.
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everyone thinks we should do it. look at the poll. i'd say 14 - 0 is a pretty solid standing. however, maybe you would want to alter the poll now? for example, have the options Monthly, Once every two months, Seasonal, Four months or something of the like to agree upon a time frame.
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well I thought about running the poll for a few more days, then eventually change it for another week. I would prefer extending them a bit since I wouldn't be able to work on this until the end of July anyway (which is when my vacations starts)
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I think it should be every month.
Although, if it were every month, perhaps it could be a tier-based system? Maybe every month there would be a POTM, and then at the end of the year, the 12 POTMS (12 for each category, of course) would compete for the Omnimaga POTY?
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Personally, I think one POT? every three months (seasonal awards) would be the best idea. This would take into consideration the fact that activity tends to change according to season (high Jan-Mar, higher Apr-Jun, low Jul-Sep, med Oct-Dec), which would make more sense since the types of programs featured could also vary according to the time.
EDIT: 16-0 now :D
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I like the idea of awards and such, perhaps we could implement a trophy system for it.
I do think we should find a new name for it, though.
Perhaps we could have a new box on the portal, 'This month's featured program is ...' or such.
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Note, the magic date is December 31st 2010. Noticing the recent decrease in features and no new staff position offers on ticalc to reduce the workload on the current staff, I started having thoughts about starting our own version of the POTY starting in 2011. It would be called CROTY 2011, which sounds a bit similar, but POTY is a common acronym, according to Google, and Playboy used a similar one, so I guess it doesn't matter. CROTY would stand for Calculator Release of the Year. I think this will also come with a seasonal award as well, like Winter, Spring, etc.
For now if I notice some news articles for some of the programs that came out a while ago, I'll probably let this project go in the back burner for another while, else, I'll try to allow the programming community to continue getting all the recognition it deserves by starting a new award. Also it would be different a little bit in the way it would mostly be programming-oriented. Basically there wouldn't be math programs competing against game tools or the like.